The invitation to Alessandro Michele’s Valentino show was a package of glow-in-the-dark fireflies, the kind used for fishing. It was apropos the manifesto the designer penned for the show, which was about a letter the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote in 1941, when he was still a student, on the subject of fireflies. According to Michele’s interpretation, for Pasolini, the glowing bugs represented “glimmers so elusive to survive the darkness of the ruling fascism.”

Not enough designers have wrestled with the desperate state of things this season. It’s safer not to ruffle feathers in either direction, no doubt. The problem with this approach is that fashion risks looking increasingly out of touch. The world is on the brink and we’re contemplating hemlines? Michele is one of the fireflies, or at least sees himself that way, and so he shared his opinion—not just in printed form, as he usually does, but via a spoken word performance by Pamela Anderson at the start of the show. “In this very dark moment we have to not turn off the light,” he said, putting it plainly during a meeting at his Place Vendôme office.

Fireflies, like butterflies, have a chrysalis stage, and you could say Michele has emerged from one his own. He’s been the subject of some online critique since arriving at Valentino, the complaints being that his clothes haven’t changed enough at his new job. This collection felt like a shedding of some of his old ways. “I tried to simplify,” he said, “but it’s my way of being simple.”

It was clear from the first look: a gathered peacock blue blouse with bows at the collar and hem accompanied by chartreuse satin pants with hems pulled snug around the heels of the model’s shoes. A blouse and trousers, a blouse and a pencil skirt—that was the basic formula. He simply mixed up the colors, the prints, and the fabrics, from chiffon and georgette to velvet and suede.

“Probably when I came at the beginning, I threw myself into this big thing,” he said. “Now it’s like I’m selecting.”
Michele still loves a sequin for evening, but his most persuasive gowns featured not a one. They came solid-colored in sapphire blue or ruby red, with asymmetric draping, or in black and white tuxedo detailing with a sheer train. The show ended with the models gathered in the center of the square space, gazing up at a light show designed to evoke the pulsing of synchronous fireflies in what was one of the most memorable and moving visuals of the week. “It’s the time to push more and more,” Michele said, “to make people dream, to try to escape, not just from reality, but from the idea that you can do nothing.”